Nellis NCO Charged With Murder of AF Wife

A Nellis Air Force Base senior non-commissioned officer has been charged with murdering his wife, also an Air Force NCO, after a night of drinking in Las Vegas, police reported.

Tech Sgt. Jarom Boyes, 41, initially tried to tell police that the death on April 6 of his wife, Melissa Boyes, 24, at their apartment in North Las Vegas was a suicide, North Las Vegas police officials said. But he allegedly confessed after failing a lie detector test, police said.

He was being held at the Las Vegas city jail on a charge of first-degree homicide, police said.

Boyes was the 99th Medical Support Squadron Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of medical maintenance at Nellis outside Las Vegas. Staff Sgt. Melissa Boyes was also assigned to the 99th Medical Support Squadron, said Airman 1st Class Monet Villacorte, a Nellis spokeswoman.

According to police, Boyes and his wife argued at a North Las Vegas bar near their apartment on the night of April 6 and the argument continued at home, where Melissa Boyes was later found dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest.

Boyes told police she killed herself, but the state of the apartment suggested there had been a violent struggle just before her death, officials said.

The police report after Boyes confession stated that a battered Melissa Boyes had run to another room to get a gun.

"Jarom continued to come after her to the point he grabbed the gun, turning it on her, shooting her one time, killing her," the police report said.

Boyes' confession that a night of drinking led up to the violence came a day after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that alcohol abuse was a factor in the recent reports of a spike in sexual assaults in the ranks that has prompted President Obama to demand a crackdown.

"Yes, alcohol does play a very big factor in sexual assault, not every case, but in many cases. There's no question it does. It's part of the larger context of why this is happening," Hagel said at a Pentagon briefing May 17.